.TH IMAGEX "1" "April 2013" "@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ @VERSION@" "User Commands" .SH NAME @IMAGEX_PROGNAME@-capture, @IMAGEX_PROGNAME@-append \- Create or append a WIM image .SH SYNOPSIS \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR \fISOURCE\fR \fIWIMFILE\fR [\fIIMAGE_NAME\fR] \ [\fIDESCRIPTION\fR] [\fIOPTION\fR]... .br \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR \fISOURCE\fR \fIWIMFILE\fR [\fIIMAGE_NAME\fR] \ [\fIDESCRIPTION\fR] [\fIOPTION\fR]... .SH DESCRIPTION .PP The \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR and \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR commands create a Windows Imaging (WIM) image from a directory tree. The \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR command creates a new WIM file containing the captured image, while the \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR command appends the captured image to an existing WIM file. Note: this man page primarily documents the UNIX behavior. See \fBWINDOWS VERSION\fR for information specific to the Windows build of wimlib. A WIM image is an independent directory tree in the WIM file. A WIM file may contain any number of separate images. However, files are stored only one time in the entire WIM, regardless of how many images the file appears in. \fISOURCE\fR specifies the location of the files to create the new WIM image from. If \fISOURCE\fR is a directory, the WIM image is captured from that directory. Alternatively, if \fISOURCE\fR is a regular file or block device, it is interpreted as a NTFS volume from which a WIM image is to be captured. Still alternatively, if the \fB--source-list\fR option is given, \fISOURCE\fR is interpreted as a file that itself provides a list of files and directories to include in the new WIM image. \fIIMAGE_NAME\fR and \fIDESCRIPTION\fR specify the name and description of the new image. If \fIIMAGE_NAME\fR is not given, it is taken to be the same as the base name of \fISOURCE\fR. If \fIDESCRIPTION\fR is not given, no description is given to the new image. .SH NORMAL MODE The normal image capture mode is entered when \fISOURCE\fR specifies a directory. The WIM image will be captured from the directory tree rooted at this directory. The directory may be on any type of filesystem. In this mode, the following information is captured from the directory tree: .IP \[bu] 4 The "normal" name and contents of each file and directory .IP \[bu] File and directory creation, access, and modification timestamps to the nearest 100 nanoseconds, if supported by the underlying filesystem .IP \[bu] Hard links and symbolic links .PP However, in this mode, the following information is \fInot\fR captured from the directory tree: .IP \[bu] 4 File permissions. The resulting WIM image will not contain any security descriptors because the format of the security descriptors is Windows-specific, and they cannot contain UNIX file modes. (Exception: see the \fB--unix-data\fR option.) .IP \[bu] No alternate data streams will be captured, since these do not exist on POSIX-compliant filesystems. The resulting WIM image will not contain any alternate data streams. (Exception: see the \fB--unix-data\fR option.) .SH NTFS MODE A special image capture mode is entered when \fISOURCE\fR is a regular file or block device. \fISOURCE\fR is interpreted as an NTFS volume and opened using libntfs-3g. If successful, a WIM image is captured containing the contents of the NTFS volume, including NTFS-specific data. Please note that the NTFS image capture mode is \fInot\fR entered if \fISOURCE\fR is a directory, even if a NTFS filesystem is mounted on \fISOURCE\fR. You must specify the NTFS volume itself (and it must be unmounted, and you must have permission to read from it). More specifically, in this mode, the following types of information are captured from the NTFS volume: .IP \[bu] 4 All data streams of all files, including the un-named data stream as well as all named data streams. .IP \[bu] Reparse points, including symbolic links, junction points, and other reparse points. .IP \[bu] File and directory creation, access, and modification timestamps from NTFS inodes (these have a resolution of 100 nanoseconds). .IP \[bu] The security descriptor for each NTFS inode. .IP \[bu] File attribute flags. .IP \[bu] All names of all files, including names in the Win32 namespace, DOS namespace, Win32+DOS namespace, and POSIX namespace. This includes hard links. .SH SOURCE LIST MODE Yet another capture mode is entered when the \fB--source-list\fR option is given. It is essentially an extension of the \fBNORMAL MODE\fR that allows multiple files or directories to be incorporated into a WIM image using a single \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR or \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR command. See the documentation for \fB--source-list\fR below. .SH WINDOWS VERSION This section documents the differences between \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR and \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR in the Windows builds of wimlib versus the rest of this man page, which is written to document UNIX build. \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR and \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR do not have separate "normal" and "NTFS" modes on Windows. There is simply one mode, and it uses the Windows API to capture NTFS-specific information, including alternate data streams, reparse points, hard links, and file attributes. So, you essentially get the advantages of the "NTFS mode" documented above, but you can capture a WIM image from any directory, not just an entire NTFS volume. This is essentially the same behavior as Microsoft's ImageX. The \fB--source-list\fR option is supported on Windows, but the \fB--dereference\fR option is not. Except for the differences documented in this section, the Windows build of \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR and \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR should be essentially equivalent to the UNIX build. However, one additional thing to note is that wimlib's Windows ImageX is NOT written to be command-line compatible with Microsoft's ImageX, although they are very similar. .SH OPTIONS .TP 6 \fB--boot\fR Specifies that the new image is to be made the bootable image of the WIM archive. .TP \fB--check\fR Include an integrity table in the new WIM file or the modified WIM file. If this option is not specified, no integrity table is included in \fIWIMFILE\fR, even if there was one before in the case of \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR. .TP \fB--compress\fR=\fITYPE\fR Specifies the compression type for the new WIM file. This flag is only valid for \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR, since the compression mode for \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR must be the same as that of the existing WIM. \fITYPE\fR may be "none", "maximum", or "fast". By default, it is "fast". You may also specify the actual names of the compression algorithms, "XPRESS" and "LZX", instead of "fast" and "maximum", respectively. .TP \fB--threads\fR=\fINUM_THREADS\fR Number of threads to use for compressing data. Default: autodetect (number of processors). Note: if creating or appending to an uncompressed WIM, additional threads will not be used, regardless of this parameter, since no compression needs to be done in this case. .TP \fB--rebuild\fR For \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR: rebuild the entire WIM rather than appending the new data to the end of it. Rebuilding the WIM is slower, but will save a little bit of space that would otherwise be left as a hole in the WIM. Also see \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ optimize\fR. .TP \fB--flags\fR=\fIEDITIONID\fR Specify a string to use in the element of the XML data for the new image. .TP \fB--verbose\fR Print the names of files and directories as they are captured, as well as a few other informational messages. .TP \fB--dereference\fR Follow symlinks; archive and dump the files they point to. (The default is to archive the symlinks themselves.) This flag is only valid in the normal image capture mode. .TP \fB--config\fR=\fIFILE\fR Specifies a configuration file for capturing the new image. The configuration file specifies files that are to be treated specially during the image capture. The format of the configuration file is a number of sections containing path globs one per line, where each section begins with the tag [ExclusionList], [ExclusionException], [CompressionExclusionList], or [AlignmentList]. Currently, only the [ExclusionList] and [ExclusionException] sections are implemented. The [ExclusionList] section specifies a list of path globs to exclude from capture, while the [ExclusionException] section specifies a list of path globs to include in the capture even if the matched file or directory name also appears in the [ExclusionList]. Relative globs with only one path component (e.g. *.mp3) match against a filename in any directory. Relative globs with multiple path components (e.g. dir/file), as well as absolute globs (e.g. /dir/file), are treated as paths starting at the root directory of capture, or the root of the NTFS volume for NTFS capture mode. If a directory is matched by a glob in the [ExclusionList], the entire directory tree rooted at that directory is excluded from the capture, unless \fB--dereference\fR is specified and there is another path into that directory through a symbolic link. For compatibility with Windows, the path separators in the globs may be either forward slashes or backslashes, and the line separators may be either UNIX-style or DOS-style. Globs with spaces in them must be quoted, and leading and trailing whitespace is not significant. Empty lines and lines beginning with '#' or whitespace followed by '#' are ignored. Paths may not have drive letters in them, as they are all relative to the root of capture and not absolute external paths. If this option is not specified the following default configuration file is used: .RS .RS .PP .nf [ExclusionList] \\$ntfs.log \\hiberfil.sys \\pagefile.sys "\\System Volume Information" \\RECYCLER \\Windows\\CSC .RE .RE .TP \fB--unix-data\fR Store the UNIX owner, group, and mode of regular files, symbolic links, and directories. This is done by adding a special alternate data stream to each directory entry that contains this information. Please note that this flag is for convenience only, in case you want to use \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@\fR to archive files on UNIX. Microsoft's software will not understand this special information. .TP \fB--no-acls\fR In the NTFS capture mode, do not capture security descriptors. This flag is also available in the native Win32 build of wimlib. .TP \fB--rpfix\fR, \fB--norpfix\fR Set whether to fix targets of absolute symbolic links (reparse points in Windows terminology) or not. When enabled (\fB--rpfix\fR), absolute symbolic links that point inside the directory tree being captured will be adjusted to be absolute relative to the root of the directory tree being captured. In addition, absolute symbolic links that point outside the directory tree being captured will be ignored and not be captured at all. When disabled (\fB--norpfix\fR), absolute symbolic links will be captured exactly as is. The default behavior for \fBimagex capture\fR is equivalent to \fB--rpfix\fR. The default behavior for \fBimagex append\fR will be \fB--rpfix\fR if reparse point fixups have previously been done on \fIWIMFILE\fR, otherwise \fB--norpfix\fR. Links are fixed up on a per-source basis in the case of a multi-source capture (\fB--source-list\fR specified), so you may wish to set \fB--norpfix\fR in that case. .TP \fB--strict-acls\fR In the Win32 native build of wimlib, fail immediately if the full security descriptor of any file or directory cannot be read. The default behavior without this option is to first try omitting the SACL from the security descriptor, then to try omitting the security descriptor entirely. The purpose of this is to capture as much data as possible without always requiring Administrator privileges. However, if you desire that all security descriptors be captured exactly, you may with to provide this option, although the Administrator should have permission to read everything anyway. .TP \fB--source-list\fR \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture\fR and \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR, as of wimlib 1.3.0, support a new option to create a WIM image from multiple files or directories. When \fB--source-list\fR is specified, the \fISOURCE\fR argument specifies the name of a text file, each line of which is either 1 or 2 whitespace separated filenames. The first filename, the source, specifies the path to a file or directory to capture into the WIM image. It may be either absolute or relative to the current working directory. The second filename, if provided, is the target and specifies the path in the WIM image that this file or directory will be saved as. Leading and trailing slashes are ignored. "/" indicates that the directory is to become the root of the WIM image. If not specified, the target string defaults to the same as the source string. An example is as follows: .RS .RS .PP .nf # Make the WIM image from the 'winpe' directory winpe / # Send the 'overlay' directory to '/overlay' in the WIM image overlay /overlay # Overlay a separate directory directly on the root of the WIM image. # This is only legal if there are no conflicting files. /data/stuff / .RE Subdirectories in the WIM are created as needed. Multiple source directories may share the same target, which implies an overlay; however, an error is issued if the same file appears in different overlays to the same directory. Filenames containing whitespace may be quoted with either single quotes or double quotes. Quotes may not be escaped. Lines consisting only of whitespace and lines beginning with '#' preceded by optional whitespace are ignored. As a special case, if \fISOURCE\fR is "-", the source list is read from standard input rather than an external file. The NTFS capture mode cannot be used with \fB--source-list\fR, as only capturing a full NTFS volume is supported. .SH NOTES \fBimage append\fR does not support appending an image to a split WIM. The different capture modes only specify the data that is captured and don't specify a special WIM format. A WIM file can contain images captured using different modes. However, all images in a WIM must have the same compression type, and \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@\fR always enforces this. \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@\fR writes WIMs having the version number 0x10d00 and a compressed stream chunk size of 32768. The only WIMs I've seen that are different from this are some pre-Vista WIMs that had a different version number. Unless \fB--rebuild\fR is specified, aborting an \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR command mid-way through has a small chance of corrupting the WIM file. However, a precaution is taken against this, so it should be very unlikely. In the event of an aborted \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append\fR, \fB@IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ optimize\fR may be run to remove extra data that may have been partially appended to the physical WIM file but not yet incorporated into the structure of the WIM. Capturing or appending an image happens in two main phases: (1) scanning the directory or NTFS volume to checksum all the files and determine the streams to be written, and (2) writing the new streams to the WIM file. Streams are not stored in memory after (1), since there could easily be gigabytes of data; instead, they are read again during step (2); however, duplicate streams in the image, and streams already existing in any other image in the WIM, are not read again. In the future, it may be possible to introduce the ability to capture an image with reading each file only one time, although this mode would have some limitations--- for example, a stream might be compressed only to be thrown away as a duplicate once it's been checksummed. \fISOURCE\fR may be a symbolic link to a directory rather than a directory itself. However, additional symbolic links in subdirectories, or in additional source directories not destined for the WIM image root (with \fB--source-list\fR), are not dereferenced unless \fB--dereference\fR is specified. .SH EXAMPLES Create a new WIM 'mywim.wim' from the directory 'somedir', using LZX compression and including an integrity table: .RS .PP @IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ capture somedir mywim.wim --compress=maximum --check .RE .PP Append an image to the WIM we just captured, but do it from a NTFS volume on the partition /dev/sda2 and name the image "Windows 7". You do not need to specify the compression type, because the WIM already is using LZX compression and this cannot be changed. You need to specify \fB--check\fR if you don't want the integrity table to be discarded. .RS .PP @IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ append /dev/sda2 mywim.wim --check "Windows 7" .RE .PP .SH SEE ALSO .BR @IMAGEX_PROGNAME@ (1)